Haaland takes a ponytail to court, Edits gets carousels and AI starts shopping for you

How much is a ponytail worth? Norwegian Air Shuttle is about to find out. A summer post the airline used to cheer on Norway’s national team has ended in a lawsuit from Erling Haaland. A quick trend joke that took minutes to make has turned into a dispute every social media manager will be watching.

The rest of the week belonged to tools designed to save brands and creators time. Instagram launched a carousel editor in the Edits app. At Advertising Week in New York, Meta and TikTok showed off AI agents that can adjust a campaign on their own or complete a purchase right in the feed. And YouTube started rewarding original content more. Let’s look at what it all means for your brand.

Haaland sues an airline over a single post

This summer, Norwegian Air Shuttle cheered on Norway’s national team by posting one of its planes with Erling Haaland’s ponytail edited on top and a caption saying it had never looked more Norwegian. The post has since been deleted, but Haaland has sued the airline for using his likeness without permission. The airline says it was a spontaneous, trend-driven post. A hearing is set for October 9 in Oslo.

The court will decide when a reactive post becomes commercial use of someone else’s image, even without their face or name. For brands, the rule is simple: if you want to use someone’s image, you need a partnership and their consent. A quick joke on a trend can get very expensive.

Instagram: carousels finally get their own editor

Since October 7, you can create carousels in the Edits app. The editor works as a canvas where you combine photos, videos and text. A photo can flow from one slide into the next and a headline can stretch across several slides, turning the swipe itself into part of the story. Layouts, cutout stickers, filters and color adjustments are all included.

For brands, the key detail is that the editor carries over your saved presets: fonts, colors, text styles and audio. Your visual identity stays consistent across Reels and carousels. A finished carousel can be posted straight to Instagram, with no exporting and no loss of quality. It’s available on iOS for now, with Android coming soon. A week after launching an AI assistant that analyzes account metrics, Edits is growing into a full creative studio. For creators and agencies, that means less switching between apps and faster content production for brands.

Meta: AI that doesn’t just advise on your campaign, it adjusts it

At Advertising Week, Meta upgraded its Business Assistant. It now remembers the context of past campaigns and, according to Social Media Today, should be able to create creative, adjust targeting or even change an ad’s budget from a plain-language request. Advertisers can also generate video from static assets, and Meta is working with Shopify on direct checkout in Messenger.

For marketers, this means AI will take over part of the work in Ads Manager. That makes the quality of the inputs matter even more: brand guidelines, creative and content from creators.

TikTok: one-tap shopping from the feed

TikTok unveiled an AI Shopping Assistant that guides people through a purchase in a single conversation, and Buy Direct, which lets them buy straight from a brand with one tap from the For You feed. For B2B, it added Agentic Leads, an AI agent that captures and qualifies leads in direct messages and in lead forms on a company’s website.

According to a PF Global study, 54 million Americans have bought a product after watching a TikTok video. Creator videos no longer just spark interest; they can close the sale. TikTok hasn’t yet said when or where the features will be available.

YouTube: no more rewards for recycled content on Shorts

YouTube is updating Shorts recommendations to prioritize original content. Channels that simply re-upload other people’s videos will see less reach. Clips from others can still be used, but with your own commentary, editing or storytelling.

For brands, it’s a signal when choosing partners: the value lies in creators with their own voice, not in accounts that just repost trends.

The bottom line

If this week could be summed up in one sentence, it would be: the tools are getting faster, but the rules of the game are still human. Instagram is simplifying carousel creation, Meta and TikTok are automating campaigns and shopping, and YouTube is rewarding originality. Yet the Haaland case is a reminder that even the fastest tool can’t replace the consent of the person whose image you want to use.

For brands, that adds up to a practical task for next quarter. Invest in what AI and new tools need as input: a clear visual identity, properly contracted partnerships and creators with their own voice. And as shopping moves directly into apps, learn to measure how much a specific partnership actually sold. Once you can do that, you’ll never have to convince anyone that influencer marketing works.